Rituals of Signs and Transitions (1975-1995)

The exhibition investigates the relationship between art works and political and historical transitions. Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan. 19 May 2015 - January 2016.

Rituals of Signs and Transitions (1975-1995) questions the significance history of art has in our region today, investigates the relationship between art works and political and historical transitions at the time, and looks at the exchange between art works with other forms of expression, such as literature, music, and cinema.

The period between 1975 and 1995 proved to be crucial in the formation of the modern Arab world. The period began with the Lebanese Civil War, was further marked by the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987 and the 1991 Gulf War, and ended with the signing of the 1993 Oslo Agreement and the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty. These events marked the paths of people and nations, and encouraged various artistic practices to record the transitions that we are still living through now.

In 1994, after learning he had cancer, Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous wrote Rituals of Signs and Transitions, which gave its name to this exhibition. This is one of the most crucial works of art confronting the use of politics in religious dialogue, and can be regarded as a prophecy today. It stands as an example of what art has the potential to reveal.

Rituals of Signs and Transitions (1975-1995) revives art, books, and visual and audio productions as an affirmation of the role of art in shaping our individual and collective histories.

Also shown is a selection edited by Emily Jacir from the salvaged rushes for Tel al Zaatar (1977), together with documentation of the 2013-2014 restoration of these rushes at the Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico (AAMOD) in Rome by Jacir and Monica Maurer. A Palestinian and Italian co-production directed by Mustafa Abu Ali, Pino Adriano and Jean Chamoun, Tel al Zaatar was filmed in 1976 directly following the August 1976 massacre of over 1,000 Palestinians and Lebanese at Tel al Zaatar, a UN-administered refugee camp in northeast Beirut. Abu Ali and Chamoun edited the footage in Rome for six months in 1977, and the rushes afterwards remained untouched in the archives for 36 years.